|
contents | jazz | |||||||||||||
| Monterey Jazz Festival 50th Anniversary Tour The Modlin Center is pleased to welcome the 50th anniversary tour of the Monterey Jazz Festival on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 7:30 pm at Richmond's Landmark Theater. The Monterey Jazz Festival began as a dream of founder Jimmy Lyons and his co-founder and colleague, Ralph Gleason. Lyons and Gleason aspired to bring together the best musicians in the genre for a weekend performance of jazz. In 1958, that dream became a reality: the first Monterey Jazz Festival featured musical greats Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. Now a tradition, the three-day event continues to be held every September at California's Monterey Fairgrounds. As the world's longest-running jazz festival, the event has grown to include nine performance stages as well as workshops, discussion panels and exhibits. The Monterey Jazz Festival is dedicated to promoting this uniquely American form of music by producing performances that both celebrate the legacy and expand the boundaries of jazz This nationwide tour of the Monterey Jazz Festival 50th Anniversary Band features leaders of the past, present and future with Terence Blanchard on trumpet, James Moody on saxophone, musical director Benny Green on piano, Derrick Hodge on bass, Kendrick Scott on drums and Nnenna Freelon performing vocals. Each member of the 50th Anniversary Band has a special relationship with the Monterey Jazz Festival: James Moody made his first appearance at MJF in the early 1960s with Dizzy Gillespie while Terence Blanchard served as the Festival's Artist-In-Residence in 2007. The Washington Post comments, "Monterey has set high musical standards while still managing to create a spontaneous festive atmosphere." The San Francisco Chronicle notes that the Monterey Jazz Festival has "set the standard for scores of festivals that have proliferated around the globe." About the Band Trumpeter Terence Blanchard, a leading musician of his generation, won the 2005 Grammy Award for "Best Jazz Album, " and was nominated for four other Grammys and for the Grand Prix du Disque. Blanchard has written more than 40 film scores, including those for Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Inside Man and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. His compositions have received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Blanchard was chosen by the Monterey Jazz Festival to be its 2007 Artist-In-Residence and performed extensively at MJF/50 in September where his band premiered A Tale of God's Will: A Requiem for Katrina. The work was recently nominated for two Grammy Awards. Vocalist Nnenna Freelon is a six-time Grammy Award-nominee. Her latest nomination, in 2005, was for Blueprint of a Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday on the Concord label. Freelon is the winner of the Eubie Blake Award and was twice nominated for the "Lady of Soul" Soul Train Award. Don Heckman of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "there is no doubt that Freelon has now positioned herself in the very top echelon." At the age of 24, pianist Benny Green became a key member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He has played with such artists as Freddie Hubbard, Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson. In 1993, Peterson chose him as the first recipient of the City of Toronto's Glenn Gould International Protégé Prize in Music. Green started his association with MJF as part of the Monterey Jazz Festival High School All Star Big Band in the 1970s. Bassist Derrick Hodge first earned acclaim by winning the Berklee College of Music's Outstanding Soloist Award in 1996 and 1997. He has since performed and recorded with numerous artists including Terence Blanchard, Mulgrew Miller, Kanye West, Clark Terry, Freddy Cole and many others. Also a composer, Hodge has written music for artists such as Terence Blanchard and Q-Tip. One of the true jazz legends, versatile reedman James Moody has been sharing his musical genius with audiences for more than five decades. In the mid-'40s, he joined the seminal bebop big band of Dizzy Gillespie; in the mid-'50s, he had a huge hit with Moody's Mood for Love and in 1998, Moody received the Jazz Master Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. A performer at the MJF since the early 1960s, Moody will be Grand Master of the show. Drummer Kendrick Scott, who began his career with the MJF playing with the Berklee/Monterey Quartet, has gone on to perform with such artists as Terence Blanchard, Kenny Garrett, Stefon Harris, and Joe Lovano. He received the 1999 Clifford Brown/Stan Getz fellowships from IAJE and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. His debut CD, The Source, was released in 2007. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Jazz News :: home page |